The mortal "hospital" still makes no sense to Loki. With its warren of narrow corridors, its small, cold rooms and sterile facilities, it seems designed, not for healing, so much as for storage. Where on Asgard, the sick and the wounded are cared for in their own homes, by compassionate wielders of healing magic, here, they are isolated, stored in hive-like cubicles, and with more care given to the records of their treatment, than to the treatment itself.
Indeed, for everything he learns that makes him think better of the mortals here on Midgard, there seem to be several to confirm his initial impression of them as misguided, pathetically unfit to care for their own. Were it not for Bruce and Tony... – And perhaps a little bit, for Steve as well. – Had he not come to care for them, far more than he'd have expected himself ever to care for a mortal being... No matter though, for these are unprofitable musings. They serve only to occupy the higher portion of his mind, while the lower part, and the skill of his hands, is occupied with the seemingly endless task of sorting and organizing files. Mortals are irrational, as well as weak. Someday undoubtedly, their realm will fall to a more powerful being. Is it weakness on his own part, Loki wonders, to hope that their conqueror will recognize the good that is in them and treat them with compassion?
He has developed a routine for his work here: There is a coffee-merchant who plies his wares along the hallway between Bruce's clinic and the Department of Radiology. Loki visits there first, exchanging some of the floppy paper that serves as money in this realm, for a cup of "latte". Then follows the filing of whatever new paperwork has accumulated over the course of the previous day. After that, he works with the old files that still remain from when he first arrived here. Their number grows fewer, but still many remain. And his schedule aligns with Bruce's, they will eat the midday meal together. And it does not, Loki eats alone, before purchasing another "latte" and returning to work.
He has come to be known by his fellow workers. The stout older woman, Cindy, is supposed to have what the Midgardians call a "crush" on him. The younger, Blanca, is devoted to the babe she has recently borne, and never sees him but what she must show endless photographs, and recount tales of its maturation. Dr. Vang captures him whene'er he is free. He seems fascinated by the details of healing magic on Asgard. Fortunately, they are not free at the same time very often. The one person Loki has not seen again since he's been here, is Angela. He is pleased. If his instructress has not returned, that means he is doing the job correctly, does it not?
Pure coincidence surely, that when she does return, it is on the same day as the meeting Bruce dreads so? "Wow, I can see the entire back wall!" Her voice echoes in the hallway outside his small filing-room. "Loki, you've made awesome progress!"
That accent of hers is called "Southern". Loki is not sure why, since from his own research, he knows the southernmost parts of Midgard are ice-covered, and home to no human life. Her voice is loud. Hearty might be a kinder way to phrase it, but he has no desire for kindness right now. He'd been hoping to eavesdrop when Bruce met with "Financial", and find out what it was about the meeting that troubled him so. Angela comes into the room and hugs him. This is a mode of greeting that indicates familiarity, and more friendship than he would have there be, between himself and this past tutress.
Nonetheless, the Trickster greets her with a smile. "Angela, well met." He remembers her devotion to coffee. "Allow me, pray, to purchase a drink for you, from the coffee-merchant?"
A grin: "You haven't changed, Loki."
There are now seats and to spare, cleared by his work of the past weeks. Angela takes one. She looks around the room again. "I can't get over it. You really have made a difference here."
She need not be so surprised. The work takes but the meanest of intelligence. Anyone could do it, were they but taught... Fandral, Volstagg, e'en the Thunderer, he of the weak brain and the strong right arm... - A word from Angela interrupts what had been a pleasant daydream of Thor being put in here, and trying vainly to set the files aright, using Mjolnir. –
"Accounting sent me," she says. "I told them I'd trained you to do the files the way we want them from the start, so you'd be prepared when the clinic was consolidated, but they wanted me to check."
Consolidated. It is another of those Midgardian words, that treats mortals as objects. This clinic that means so much to Bruce and his compatriots: It should not be "consolidated".
"Dr. Banner told me the clinic was going to have to abide by the rules of the hospital. He said nothing about it's being 'consolidated'."
"It's just a word." A liar from birth, Loki recognizes the look of dishonesty on Angela's face. "Things are going to keep on going just the way they've always been. Dr. Banner and Dr. Vang are still going to be able to treat everyone who was hurt by the invasion."
She means they will not. Like most who traffic mostly in honesty, Angela is a poor liar. The truth fair screams from her words and her manner: Mortals are going to be hurt by this "consolidation". Why he cares, Loki is not sure. Is it because he knows these mortals matter so much to Bruce? Leave aside the matter of why Bruce himself should matter so much... Loki is apparently more like Thor than he'd thought: He can love these mortals, and become bonded to them. At least he has done so with Bruce and Tony.
"A word..." He looks at Angela, studies her face. She looks away. "How much change will there be?"
"As little as we can manage." Angela's voice has changed, the "heartiness" completely gone. She sounds uncomfortable now, a little bit unhappy. "Do you think we want to be known as the hospital that turned away victims of the invasion?"
So people are going to get turned away. Loki does not withdraw his gaze.
"It's to do with money, is what it is." Frustration colors Angela's voice. "The hospital can't function at a loss. We can't keep providing service that the insurance companies won't cover. There's only so many costs we can eat, and then it's our bottom line."
They are "eating" costs? There is a "bottom line" involved somehow? This is a jargon designed to conceal deception, perhaps from Angela herself as well as from her listener.
"New York's lucky Dr. Banner and Dr. Vang were able to keep the clinic going for as long as they did," Angela says. "They've already helped most of the victims of the invasion. I guess there'll probably be some more: People with chronic conditions, perhaps psychological trauma. I'm sure they'll be able to get their insurance to cover treatment." She looks down, her face a study of shame and guilt.
She is sure of no such thing. She is assisting the hospital as it destroys Bruce and his partner's work. Anger floods Loki. He would would take action, destroy all in this hospital who dare stand in the way of the clinic. But he is a mere prisoner here. His magic is sealed, and if he dares lift a finger to cause harm, all that will happen will be for him to be brought back to Asgard and his punishment time served out there. And after all, these are mere mortals that will be harmed. Their lives are short, no doubt they would die soon with our without treatment.
"I've got you all depressed." Angela's voice is guilty. "What do you say I buy you lunch to make up for it?"
They lunch together. Loki pays. The news is, after all, no fault of Angela's. She merely relays the messages of her superiors. No point being rude to her. – No point destroying her, e'en had he the power to do it. – They lunch. Bruce and Dr. Vang are still in their meeting with "Financial"; there is no point waiting for them. They are still meeting, with the rest of the clinic staff now, when Loki returns, and he and Angela begin their long afternoon going over the files. Loki does not see Bruce again until the day is over, and then he waits an extra hour, putting away more old files, until Bruce is finally finished.
Returning on the subway train that evening: "What good does it do to worry about it?" They have managed to get a seat together for a change. They can almost hear each other's words, at this close distance. "I told you about when I worked in Calcutta, didn't I?" Bruce says. "Where SHIELD found me, when they wanted my help with the invasion? I remember seeing this guy at a train station once. He was in the final stages of tuberculosis, coughing his guts out into this trash can. Place was crowded as hell, but there was like a five-foot circle of empty space all around him, and people were going on about their business. I avoided him too." Bruce frowns. "He was dying, Loki. I couldn't have saved him, and if I'd taken him back to the clinic with me, he'd just have infected patients who still had a chance." He shrugs. "Sometimes you have to be like that, Loki. There's things you can fix in this world, and there's things you can't fix. You'll only go crazy if you let yourself forget which are which."
Crazy? It sounds like all of Midgard is crazy, to allow such conditions to continue. The mortals here have enough and to spare. Wherefore are some helped, while others are denied? Loki finds himself fingering Odin's bracelets. "And I had my powers intact..."
"I know, I know. You'd fix everyone's problems, wouldn't you?" The train jerks to a halt at their station, and Bruce and Loki exit into the cold air of the February evening. "Don't forget, the whole point of the clinic is to clean up the mess that you made."
The sidewalks are crowded, but Loki walks in a circle of emptiness, lost in his own thoughts. Things are run badly on Midgard. Once he truly thought to remedy that. He had truly believed that a being of greater power, greater wisdom, could change conditions for the better for these mortals. Instead though, what did he cause but harm and more harm, suffering beyond that which already existed? Is he then, no better – No wiser. – than the mortals he now lives amongst? Is there anyone, in this or another realm, who can bring relief, without causing more damage than they repair?
"I know." It is only as they enter the Tower that he realizes Bruce has been a silent as he. "Big problems to think about, huh?" A weak laugh. "And at the end of the workday too." Bruce presses the button for the elevator. Upstairs is light, warmth, a good dinner no doubt, cooked by Rogers, or ordered by Tony, from one of the "take-out" facilities he favors. How, Loki wonders, did he become enmeshed in problems so large, so confusing? Where was the point when his life and that of the Midgardians, became entwined?